Windows Phone 7

Microsoft released an update for WP7 that’s meant to improve updating the devices going forward. They’ve identified a glitch though, specifically with Samsung phones. From Winrumors: A number of Windows Phone 7 users applied the patch on Monday and some Samsung Omnia owners devices have been left in a “bricked” state. Devices simply instruct users to connect them to a PC, hard resetting the device or connecting it to a PC does not appear to solve the issue. Microsoft has also been advising users ......

We’ve had some problems with the Winnipeg .NET UG website, but things are getting sorted out and the site should be back up very shortly. In the meantime, here’s info on our January event and how to register. This is also a Microsoft sponsored event, so we’ll have some great swag to give away. As always, pizza will be provided! When: Wednesday, January 26th Where: 17th Floor Conference Room, Richardson Building Session: Taking your Windows Phone Apps to the Next Level with Tombstoning Speaker: Tyler ......

I finally got around tonight to getting my sim card from Rogers (Canadian 3G cellular telco)*. I bought my Focus unlocked from Expansys, so I get to avoid the annoyance that is cellular contracts. So here are some things you need to know about setting up your unlocked phone with a different provider, specifically (obviously) Rogers: You will require to hard-reset your phone. After putting in the SIM card, I looked *everywhere* for a setting that would let my device see my SIM card. No dice, displayed ......

Want to drag and drop files from your computer directly to your Windows Phone 7 device? The folks at WPCentral have posted an article showing how to do it! Just remember you have to do the hack on every computer you want to transfer files from.

This FAQ article came across my Twitter stream this afternoon. It’s related to the Samsung Focus, but this line suggests its a broad design feature of WP7 devices: Windows Phone 7 does not support freely swapping microSD Card in and out. ORLY!? Not only that but… Many commercially available retail microSD cards are not approved for use in Windows Phone 7. Use of unapproved cards may cause performance degradation or device instability including unexpected reset and loss of user data. A microSD card ......

I had a whole blog post written up on the evils of Telus and how the “largest 3G network in Canada” doesn’t even run through two of the central provinces – Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Then I found out that they actually are 3G in SK and have the Windows Phone 7 devices listed as “coming soon”, so it would seem that Manitoba is the only province left out. Fine. Whatever. But that still leaves us with an interesting landscape here in Canada. We have three carriers committed to WP7 devices at launch: ......

Microsoft Press is giving away Charles Petzold’s new Programming Windows Phone 7 book! This isn’t just a short intro-type book either. 24 chapters and over 1000 pages, this is a huge piece of Windows Phone 7 steak. You can download the e-book and the associated code examples from the MS Press blog here.

Microsoft TechDays has been rolling through Canada over the last few months, and we’re coming up to the Winnipeg stop on the tour December 7 – 8! I’m going to be presenting two sessions at this year’s event: Building Web Forms Applications Made Easier with ASP.NET 4 and New IDE and Language Features in Microsoft VS.NET 2010 Using Visual Basic and C# I also have a local flavours track submission in for telling my own development story around Windows Phone 7 (which, if you’ve been following my blog, ......

Just finished watching the Windows Phone 7 launch event that streamed live from NYC this morning. Was a great event that really set the stage for the platforms launch next month. My general thoughts are that the platform looks very promising and Microsoft is definitely leveraging lessons learned from Apple and Google’s phone offerings as well as the various platforms that they’ve developed (.NET, Silverlight, XNA, Zune, etc.). Of course, until people actually get their hands on the devices and put ......